> The Program audio series is a sci-fi anthology podcast set in a future in which Money, State, and God became fused into a single entity called the Program. Each episode is a standalone story focusing on ordinary people inhabiting this extraordinary world. And for them, it is not this future that is terrifying - it is our present.
Thanks for posting this detailed history and breakdown. And congratulations on your success. As someone with a podcast in the same ballpark of downloads, I will say it's a real testament to how much people must like The Program that you have managed to monetize to the tune of ~$30K CAD in a single year with just 140,000 downloads in the same year. That's really good! People must love what you're doing and that must be very gratifying. Cheers!
A very astute observation - The Program's audience is indeed loyal if not large. I mentioned in some previous reports that I might have painted myself into too big of a niche with a sci-fi audio drama at the intersection of IT and humanities, but people who like it seem to really love it. 1000 true fans, and all that I guess.
To the author: do you use AI at all in the creative aspects of the production? I assume that AI assistance in creative writing is now mainstream, and an accepted tool for most writers. I am interested to know your thoughts on this subject and if you use AI then what sort of methods do you use?
Note: Google Gemini reports that "the most successful writers in 2025 use me as a "distillation machine." They write 1,000 words of raw emotion, then ask me to help them find the "300 words that actually matter"
Yes it sounds like a bold statement. I called Gemini out on that and it admitted that it over-egged its confidence on that assertion.
But presumably the LLMs do have some knowledge about how they are used?
On further probing Gemini did give a plausible justification - in summary:
"Creation is easy. Selection is hard. In an era of infinite content, the "most successful" writer isn't the one who can produce the most; it's the one with the best taste. Using an LLM as a distillation machine allows a writer to iterate through their own ideas at 10x speed, discarding the "average" and keeping only the "potent."
LLMs have no knowledge (really “knowledge-like weights and biases”) outside their training set and system prompt. That plausible justification is just that — a bunch of words that make sense when strung together. Whether you’d like to give that any epistemic weight is up to you.
Why would Gemini (the text model part) have that info? I'm sure that Google has some kinda analytics, or so on, but it wouldn't necessarily be part of training, the system prompt, or distillation directly.
I haven't really found a way to incorporate AI into my creative process.
I do sometimes use it as thesaurus on steroids when I can't think of the right word or if I need to check grammar / sentence structure (I'm not a native speaker). I would never use AI in the way Gemini self-reports (and I doubt that's really a thing anyway).
I might be tempted to use it for episode art if I didn't have access to a professional illustrator.
I am experimenting with some AI-generated music at the moment, but that's for background cues that I'd use canned royalty-free music for anyway (emotionally important scenes have tailored-made music done by a professional composer).
One way I'm eyeing to use AI in the future is as a way to translate what are currently audio stories into video. But I feel we're still not there.
> I assume that AI assistance in creative writing is now mainstream, and an accepted tool for most writers.
It absolutely is not. In fact the Nebula awards just banned entries from having _any_ AI use involved with them whatsoever. You can't even use them for grammar correction.
This is informative for an indie audio podcast. I wonder how the economics and scale change for podcasts published by studios like Audible or even smaller ones like Pushkin
> The Program audio series is a sci-fi anthology podcast set in a future in which Money, State, and God became fused into a single entity called the Program. Each episode is a standalone story focusing on ordinary people inhabiting this extraordinary world. And for them, it is not this future that is terrifying - it is our present.
Thanks for posting this detailed history and breakdown. And congratulations on your success. As someone with a podcast in the same ballpark of downloads, I will say it's a real testament to how much people must like The Program that you have managed to monetize to the tune of ~$30K CAD in a single year with just 140,000 downloads in the same year. That's really good! People must love what you're doing and that must be very gratifying. Cheers!
A very astute observation - The Program's audience is indeed loyal if not large. I mentioned in some previous reports that I might have painted myself into too big of a niche with a sci-fi audio drama at the intersection of IT and humanities, but people who like it seem to really love it. 1000 true fans, and all that I guess.
Sounds like a great show, will give it a listen.
To the author: do you use AI at all in the creative aspects of the production? I assume that AI assistance in creative writing is now mainstream, and an accepted tool for most writers. I am interested to know your thoughts on this subject and if you use AI then what sort of methods do you use?
Note: Google Gemini reports that "the most successful writers in 2025 use me as a "distillation machine." They write 1,000 words of raw emotion, then ask me to help them find the "300 words that actually matter"
Google Gemini has literally no idea how it is being used. It made that up.
Yes it sounds like a bold statement. I called Gemini out on that and it admitted that it over-egged its confidence on that assertion.
But presumably the LLMs do have some knowledge about how they are used?
On further probing Gemini did give a plausible justification - in summary:
"Creation is easy. Selection is hard. In an era of infinite content, the "most successful" writer isn't the one who can produce the most; it's the one with the best taste. Using an LLM as a distillation machine allows a writer to iterate through their own ideas at 10x speed, discarding the "average" and keeping only the "potent."
LLMs have no knowledge (really “knowledge-like weights and biases”) outside their training set and system prompt. That plausible justification is just that — a bunch of words that make sense when strung together. Whether you’d like to give that any epistemic weight is up to you.
Why would Gemini (the text model part) have that info? I'm sure that Google has some kinda analytics, or so on, but it wouldn't necessarily be part of training, the system prompt, or distillation directly.
I haven't really found a way to incorporate AI into my creative process.
I do sometimes use it as thesaurus on steroids when I can't think of the right word or if I need to check grammar / sentence structure (I'm not a native speaker). I would never use AI in the way Gemini self-reports (and I doubt that's really a thing anyway).
I might be tempted to use it for episode art if I didn't have access to a professional illustrator.
I am experimenting with some AI-generated music at the moment, but that's for background cues that I'd use canned royalty-free music for anyway (emotionally important scenes have tailored-made music done by a professional composer).
One way I'm eyeing to use AI in the future is as a way to translate what are currently audio stories into video. But I feel we're still not there.
> I assume that AI assistance in creative writing is now mainstream, and an accepted tool for most writers.
It absolutely is not. In fact the Nebula awards just banned entries from having _any_ AI use involved with them whatsoever. You can't even use them for grammar correction.
The irony!
This is informative for an indie audio podcast. I wonder how the economics and scale change for podcasts published by studios like Audible or even smaller ones like Pushkin